Road maintenance: NHA faces paucity of funds

Federal government blamed for blocking funds for several years

ISLAMABAD: The National Highway Authority [NHA] is facing a paucity of funds for maintenance of lanes and tracks on national highways and motorways.

“The federal government has not allocated any funds for maintenance of roads despite repeated requests, instead asking the NHA to generate the required amount from its own revenue,” said a federal government official, requesting anonymity.



Citing insufficient revenue generated from toll plazas every year for road maintenance, the official said, “We still fall short of Rs6 billion every year as the requirement is Rs26 billion, while the generation is Rs20 billion.”

“The shortage of funds has also halted NHA from repairing the ramshackle roads of two main highways -- Indus Highway [1,200km] and GT Road [1,800km],” he added.

Blaming the worn-out roads for the high number of road accidents, he explained, “Repairing the roads in patches is not a permanent solution to the problem.”

He also blamed increase in the load of traffic and rainfalls for worsening the condition.

Criticising the government’s failure to provide funds to repair the road of M2 -- a motorway connecting Islamabad/Rawalpindi to Lahore – for the last 20 years, he claimed that the NHA had no other option but to hand over the road maintenance work of M2 to the Frontier Works Organisation through public-private partnership on Build-Operate-Transfer basis.



“It is estimated that Rs34 billion had been spent on its maintenance,” he added.

The NHA runs 85 per cent of the trade in the country through a road network of 12,131km.

When contacted, NHA spokesperson Kashif Zaman said, “NHA is making all-out efforts within its available financial resources to repair the road network in order to ensure that commuters get a smooth and comfortable drive.”

He said, “There is a huge gap between revenue generation from toll plazas and the amount required for road maintenance.”